In recent years, as more and more offices have become networked, it has become common that an output device also is connected to the network in an office and executes output processing such as printing or faxing over the network based on an output instruction from any terminal within the office.
Moreover, against the background of the increasing speed of networks, an expanded range of Internet services, and the like, there is increasing drive to build a server (hereinafter a data management system) that keeps and manages data such as a document on the Internet.
On the other hand, there is a tendency that as few applications as possible are desired to be installed on the PC terminals in an office in light of maintenance, security, and the like, and so there is a demand for a system that can accomplish an intended task using only a general-purpose Web browser.
In this context, the problem is a method for printing data that is managed by a server on the Internet on an output device in an intranet that is located inside a firewall when operation is performed from a Web browser of a PC terminal.
Without the firewall, printing is possible by sending print data from the data management system to the output device. However, the firewall restricts data from being sent from the server on the Internet to the output device on the intranet.
Thus, a mechanism referred to as “URL printing” as also described in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2003-345579 has been contrived as the method for outputting an image located on a Web server on the Internet using an output device that is present on an intranet. In this method, first, a URL that indicates the target image located on the Web server is checked and passed to the output device. Although there are various methods for passing the URL to the output device, an example is a method that uses an infrared communication function incorporated in a terminal such as a mobile phone and sends the URL of the image to the output device that also has an infrared communication function. The output device that has been given the URL accesses the Web server based on the given URL and executes downloading of the target image and output processing of that image. In this case, since the server on the Internet is accessed from the output device side, the output device can acquire the target image without being blocked by the firewall.
The above-described “URL printing” usually applies to an image or a Web page that is open to the public, and therefore, anyone can perform printing as long as they know the target URL. However, when the print target is business data, there is a problem of security if anyone can perform printing by simply knowing the URL. Usually, however, user authentication is required in order to acquire data from the data management system, and data cannot be acquired or printed unless a correct password and user ID are presented.
Thus, a method can be considered in which as shown in FIG. 2, a username and password together with a target URL are passed to an output device from a PC terminal, the output device performs user authentication for the data management system, and thereby the output device acquires print target data. However, user management is not performed in the output device, or even if user management is performed, user management is usually performed separately in the output device and the data management system on the Internet. That is to say, passing the password of the data management system to the output device even though the password of the data management system is not “information that is necessary in order to use the output device” involves a significant security risk and can be said to be a problem. For example, assuming that a program that operates the output device is malicious or vulnerable, passing the password of the data management system to the output device involves a risk of leakage of confidential information, that is, the password of the data management system.